Abstract

This dissertation entitled ‘A Model Of Women Empowerment for The Community Development According to Buddhist Principles’ has three objectives:           1) to study ideas and theories empowering women for the development of community based on modern sciences, 2) to study Buddhist principles in empowering women for the development of community, and 3) to propose the model in empowering women for the development of community based on Buddhist Principles. This is a qualitative research done by studying documentaries and in-depth interview of key informants including non-participatory observation.

In the study, it was found that the empowerment ideas of women based on modern sciences in the matter of family basically require the physical and mental readiness while taking care of children and performing their assigned duty, in education, it requires the lifelong development of knowledge; they should be enthusiastic about searching for certain knowledge and new information technology in order that they can make use of them in daily life, in economics, they should be economically trained so that they can help their family and community; they should have self-reliance by having knowledge on labour law, in society, they should be participatory allowed in thinking and making some decision in the community activities and in politics they should be encouraged to pay proper attention to the regional politics and democratic government; they should be allowed to making more networking and being the members of political party and election than this.

As far as the Buddhist principles in empowering women are concerned, four sublime states of mind and six directions should be applied to empower family, threefold training and scholars should be applied to empower the education, in economics the principle of virtues conducive to benefits in the present should be applied, in society four bases of solidarity and four virtues for a good householder life should be applied, in politics the principle of things leading never to decline but only to prosperity should be applied.

The empowerment model of women for the community development according to Buddhadhamma found the model called ‘LPD Model for Women’. That can be divided into three steps as follows: 1) Learning step; this step basically requires the affection and good relationship for the family which can be actualized through loving kindness, compassion sympathetic joy and equanimity; one should forgive and being honest and that can be made when one is making endless effort in learning and participating,  understanding the regional and country government in the way it becomes, be it legal state or civil state so as to adjust it to suit the community,  2) Practice step; one should act as the best practitioner such as those who become mothers, they should act as the role model through learning and making effort to earn cost of living, apart from that they should get themselves trained to be the good leader in community and society including bring democratic value to their family and community, and 3) Development step; Buddhadhamma can be empowered in the following ways: in family the good relationship inside one’s family should be empowered through realization of one’s duty  and valuation of one another by means of taking responsibility of what is creatively assigned inside the family side by side with more community’s work, in education the learning leading to wisdom and vital life should be constructively provided  so that one can understand the need and thereby learning and evaluating oneself leading to the sustainable development, in economics the principle of the present benefit should be applied  in order to earn what is based on sufficiency economy and its true value, in society the establishment of the consciousness of community based on the firm goal should be made, in politics the principle of things leading never to decline but only to prosperity and non-bias should be applied to making an awareness through conversation in order to have mutual respect  in the order and thereby realizing the value of democracy, honoring others’ opposite opinions and expression wherein certain benefit is available, and the cultural community and rights of people should be protected so that the value in the community including honoring the elderly people can be actualized respectively.

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